Roofing in Montenegro

Montenegro is a small, mountainous Adriatic country where traditional houses were built almost entirely of local stone. Roofs varied with altitude and wealth, from straw and rough stone slabs to curved clay tiles, while the Bay of Kotor developed a Venetian-influenced coastal architecture.

Climate and hazards

The coast is Mediterranean, the karst interior is harsh, and the mountains have heavy winters. Rainwater was precious in the karst, and houses collected it in reservoirs (bistijerne). Montenegro is strongly seismic: the 1979 earthquake seriously damaged monuments in the Kotor region, including four Romanesque churches and the town walls. As part of Yugoslavia, Montenegro came under the first Yugoslav seismic building code of 1964.

Roofing history

The Bay of Kotor was a major Adriatic outpost of Venice, whose rule there began in the 15th century; Kotor's Cathedral of St Tryphon dates from 1166, replacing an 8th-century church. The Franciscan builder Vito of Kotor was the main architect of the Visoki Dečani monastery (1327-1335) in present-day Kosovo, showing the region's role in medieval Balkan building.

Inland, the birth house of the prince-bishop and poet Njegoš at Njeguši (where he was born in 1813), now a museum, represents the house of a well-to-do Montenegrin family. A French traveller described such houses as two-storey buildings of roughly cut stone covered with unprocessed stone slabs. The house was last rehabilitated in 1973, when the museum opened.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Karst stone house: walls of roughly dressed stone in two faces, 50-80 cm (20-31 in) thick, with rubble packed between. Most houses had double-pitched roofs covered with half-round clay tiles (ćiramida), held at the edges by stones. In earlier times roofs could also be thatched with straw or covered with slate.
• Stone-slab roofs: rough stone slabs, as described at Njeguši.
• Prizemljuše: simple single-storey houses built by poorer families.
• Tower houses: fortified stone towers occur in the north, for example the Ganić tower house in Rožaje.

Roofing today

Old karst houses, often ruins, have recently been bought and renovated, frequently by foreign owners.

Codes, standards and regulation

The 2013 Law on the Protection of the Natural and Culturo-Historic Region of Kotor governs heritage work in the bay.

Notable roofs

• Historic towns of the Bay of Kotor (UNESCO)
• Njegoš's birth house, Njeguši

Local roofing terms

• ćiramida - half-round clay roof tile
• bistijerna - rainwater reservoir
• izba - ground floor used for storage
• pojata - separate building for cattle
• prizemljuša - single-storey house

Sources and gaps

Data on current roofing materials, general building regulations, information on domestic roofing manufacturers and detailed technical descriptions of Montenegrin roofs were not found in published sources.